If the bike is in good shape, seems about a fair trade to me. No one getting a bargain, no one getting ripped off.

 

That is an awfully big assumption...

 

Not a big assumption if there is personal risk involved. Things like religious service receipts and and meticulous care can offset that, but to believe that a bike modified with the most aggressive form of pipes was ridden hard is the safe starting position for a buyer. The other option is not in the buyer's favor. It's a buyer's market.

 

Transition year bike. Virtually every part of the primary, starter, clutch,and transmission was improved on 90-up bikes. Some parts...like the inner primary..were 86-88 only and impossible to find.

 

I would be cautious about a bike with drag pipes as well. Sometimes you can tell a lot about the condition of the bike by taking a look at the owner and his surroundings as well. If you take a look at the bike and it's parked in a barn next to a house trailer with a car in the front yard up on blocks, run.


carl

 

FWIW, my bike has a different speedo. Simple story. First speedo went around the first 100,000 miles and back to "zero". Then, somewhere between 3,000 (103,000) and 4,000 (104,000) the odometer quit working. I replaced it with another OEM speedo. Then, after a few years, I decided I wanted a '62 style speedo, so I bought one and installed it. I figured since the odometer reading was already "off" by an indeterminate amount, what did it matter? If I need to know the total mileage (best estimate), I have my service logbook.


If I was still running the original speedo, I'd have turned it back to "zero" twice now, anyway.

 

The guy is a neighbor, the bike has less than 1000 miles a year on it and is clean. A bigger tell would be a compression check (do a compression check!) than assuming all bikes with drag pipes (one of the most popular choices back then) have had the **** ridden out of them IMO.

 

+1 on the compression check!

Seller has the bike on Craigslist: http://kansascity.craigslist.org/mcy/5687894834.html

Looks like original paint. Hard to tell from the pic much more than that.

The drag pipes would be a turnoff for me, but not so much because I think they imply abuse so much as I really don't like them. But like dfwhockey17 said, a compression check will answer a lot of questions.

I've got a soft spot for those early Softails. That is a very important bike in MoCo history. Everyone likes to say how the Evo motor was what ignited the "boom years" (and surely there is a lot to that), but the Softail was also a huge part of that.

Assuming it presents well, starts, runs and rides like it should, $4700 is in the ballpark. If there are any obvious things that will need immediate replacement (ie, if the belt has a huge rock in it or the tires are shot), I'd work the price down accordingly.

For reference, browsing through the listings on Cycletrader, you can find very clean, Evo Softails for $6k to $6.5k. The dealer closest to my house has a crazy-clean looking (stock exhaust, timing cover still riveted, everything looks original) '94 Fatboy asking $5800.

 

One thing not to be overlooked is drag pipes run about 20% of what other pipes will run ya, so budget makes a difference too.

If a guy is running drag pipes on one and another has a 2:1 header system on his, which is ridden the hardest?

The one smiling the most.

Griz

 

Baloney. Drags only mean that the previous owner wanted to look and sound like everyone else.